María Algueró-Muñiz

University of Glasgow | UofG · Institute of Biodiversity, Animal Health and Comparative Medicine

Amphinema gordini, a new species of pandeid anthomedusa, is described from one holotype and several paratypes found in perfect condition in deep-water (883 m depth) sediment trap samples recovered off northern Chile. The new Amphinema species is characterized by the presence of an apical chamber, prominent gonads located in the interradial position...

Ocean acidification (OA) is one of the most critical anthropogenic threats to marine ecosystems. While significant ecological responses of plankton communities to OA have been revealed mainly by small-scale laboratory approaches, the interactive effect of OA-related changes on zooplankton metabolism and their biogeochemical implications in the natu...

In the autumn of 2014, nine large mesocosms were deployed in the oligotrophic subtropical North-Atlantic coastal waters off Gran Canaria (Spain). Their deployment was designed to address the acidification effects of CO2 levels from 400 to 1,400 μatm, on a plankton community experiencing upwelling of nutrient-rich deep water. Among other parameters,...

Gravitational sinking of photosynthetically fixed particulate organic carbon (POC) constitutes a key component of the biological carbon pump. The fraction of POC leaving the surface ocean depends on POC sinking velocity (SV) and remineralization rate (Cremin), both of which depend on plankton community structure. However, the key drivers in plankto...

Ocean acidification (OA) is affecting marine ecosystems through changes in carbonate chemistry that may influence consumers of phytoplankton, often via trophic pathways. Using a mesocosm approach, we investigated OA effects on a subtropical zooplankton community during oligotrophic, bloom, and post-bloom phases under a range of different pCO2 level...

Ocean acidification, the change in seawater carbonate chemistry due to the uptake of anthropogenic CO2, affects the physiology of marine organisms in multiple ways. Diverse competitive and trophic interactions transform the metabolic responses to changes in community composition, seasonal succession and potentially geographical distribution of spec...

Ongoing acidification of the ocean through uptake of anthropogenic CO2 is known to affect marine biota and ecosystems with largely unknown consequences for marine food webs. Changes in food web structure have the potential to alter trophic transfer, partitioning, and biogeochemical cycling of elements in the ocean. Here we investigated the impact o...

Time course of the biogenic silica to total particulate carbon ratio. Solid lines show mean values of the biogenic silica (BSi) to particulate carbon (TPC) ratio in (A) the water column and (B) sediment trap samples of the ambient (blue) and high (red) CO2 treatment. Coloured areas indicate standard deviation of the replicated (n = 5) treatments. R...

Time course of different size classes of biogenic silica. Solid lines, dotted lines, and dashed lines represent the three size classes of total biogenic silica (BSi), the fraction >200 μm, and the fraction <200 μm respectively. All lines represent mean values of the (A) ambient and (B) high CO2 treatment. Roman numbers denote the different phases o...

High-resolution image of a typical sediment trap sample during Phase III. Section of a high-resolution image, taken from a sediment trap subsample of Mesocosm 4 (high CO2) on t65 (Phase III). The highly abundant round objects are cells of the large diatom Coscinodiscus concinnus (Smith, 1856). (PDF)

Moving average of dissolved organic carbon and net community production. Dashed lines show net changes of dissolved organic carbon (DOC, yellow) and net community production of carbon (NCP, blue/red) as average values of (A) ambient and (B) high CO2 mesocosms. Solid lines of the same colour code show strongly smoothed data (moving average of nine),...

Ocean acidification-the decrease in seawater pH due to rising CO2concentrations-has been shown to lower survival in early life stages of fish and, as a consequence, the recruitment of populations including commercially important species. To date, ocean-acidification studies with fish larvae have focused on the direct physiological impacts of elevat...

Ocean acidification (OA) is expected to alter plankton community structure in the future ocean. This, in turn, could change the composition of sinking organic matter and the efficiency of the biological carbon pump. So far, most OA experiments involving entire plankton communities have been conducted in meso- to eutrophic environments. However, rec...

Ocean acidification is affecting marine ecosystems directly through changes in pH, as well as indirectly, via trophic pathways. Thus, to evaluate impacts of ocean acidification on marine communities it is necessary to consider the potential pCO2 effects on population dynamics as well as community trophic interactions. Within the framework of the BI...

The acidification of the oceans could potentially alter marine plankton communities with consequences for ecosystem functioning. While several studies have investigated effects of ocean acidification on communities using traditional methods, few have used genetic analyses. Here, we use community barcoding to assess the impact of ocean acidification...

Final OTU table based on the 18S gene region containing the HTS reads. Columns A—E contain information about the sampling day, sampling method, sampled mesocosms and CO2 treatment. Columns F—P contain information about environmental variables. Columns Q—ACB contain OTU information. This data was used for adonis, PCA (Fig 3), nMDS (Fig 2) and RDA (F...

Final OTU table based on the cox1 gene region containing the HTS reads. Columns A—E contain information about the sampling day, sampling method, sampled mesocosms and CO2 treatment. Columns F—AN contain OTU information. This data was used for adonis analysis. (TXT)

Steps of the bioinformatics pipeline. Including the programs used, decreasing sequence reads, and OTU numbers. (PDF)

Ocean acidification may affect zooplankton directly by decreasing in pH, as well as indirectly via trophic pathways, where changes in carbon availability or pH effects on primary producers may cascade up the food web thereby altering ecosystem functioning and community composition. Here, we present results from a mesocosm experiment carried out dur...

Oceanic uptake of anthropogenic carbon dioxide (CO2) causes pronounced shifts in marine carbonate chemistry and a decrease in seawater pH. Increasing evidence indicates that these changes—summarized by the term ocean acidification (OA)—can significantly affect marine food webs and biogeochemical cycles. However, current scientific knowledge is larg...

Plankton communities play a key role in the marine food web and are expected to be highly sensitive to ongoing environmental change. Oceanic uptake of anthropogenic carbon dioxide (CO2) causes pronounced shifts in marine carbonate chemistry and a decrease in seawater pH. These changes–summarized by the term ocean acidification (OA)–can significantl...

Dams alter the natural dynamics of river inflow which disrupt the biological processes in downstream ecosystems, as observed in the Guadiana estuary (SW-Iberian Peninsula, Europe). Here, significant inter-annual fluctuations in the densities of jellyfish occur during summer, likely due to changes in river discharge during winter. So, this study aim...

Ocean acidification is considered as a crucial stressor for marine communities. In this study, we tested the effects of the IPCC RPC6.0 end-of-century acidification scenario on a natural plankton community in the Gullmar Fjord, Sweden, during a long-term mesocosm experiment from a spring bloom to a mid-summer situation. The focus of this study was...

Results from the dilution experiment. Mean values and standard error (Std.error) of the phytoplankton growth rate k, instantaneous (natural) phytoplankton growth rate μ0, phytoplankton mortality m and microzooplankton grazing rate g are shown for the different phytoplankton groups distinguished in the dilution experiment. (DOCX)

Results from the community grazing experiments. Mean values and standard error (Std.error) of the net growth rates calculated for the most abundant groups of phytoplankton, ciliates and dinoflagellates (dinos) in experiment (Exp.) 1 and 2. The four treatments used were low CO2 without grazer (Low -G), low CO2 with grazer (Low +G), high CO2 without...

Results from the analysis of the community grazing experiments. Results from the ANOVAs from the two community grazing experiments. Effects of CO2, grazer presence (Grazer), and the interaction of the two factors on growth rate of total phytoplankton and ciliates as well as the most common taxa of the two groups are shown. Transformations are indic...

Global change is affecting marine ecosystems through a combination of different stressors such as warming, ocean acidification and oxygen depletion. Very little is known about the interactions among these factors, especially with respect to gelatinous zooplankton. Therefore, in this study we investigated the direct effects of pH, temperature and ox...

Every year, the oceans absorb about 30% of anthropogenic carbon dioxide (CO2) leading to a re-equilibration of the marine carbonate system and decreasing seawater pH. Today, there is increasing awareness that these changes–summarized by the term ocean acidification (OA)–could differentially affect the competitive ability of marine organisms, thereb...

Temperature profiles over the course of the study. Changes in temperature averaged over the entire water column are represented by the white line plots on top of the contours with the corresponding y-axes on the right side. The black lines at t37 mark the end of convective mixing (See also Fig 5). (DOCX)

Contributions intended to be published within the framework of the BIOACID II long-term mesocosm study. Note that two studies [16,32] have already been published before initiating the PLOS collection. (DOCX)

Abundance of individual plankton groups during peak chla concentrations in phase II. For the community-based analysis we generally included functional groups rather than species. For copepods, we only included Pseudocalanus sp. here since this species strongly dominated the copepod community both, numerically and in terms of biomass. (Note, however...

Abundance of individual plankton groups during the post bloom period in phase IV. For the community-based analysis we generally included functional groups rather than species. For copepods, we only included Pseudocalanus sp. here since this species strongly dominated the copepod community both, numerically and in terms of biomass. (Note, however, t...

Underwater photograph (~8 m depth) of a mesocosm at the end of the first (failed) experiment where we enclosed seawater with a considerably higher salinity than usually experienced in the fjord. The heavy water was accumulating at the bottom of the mesocosm and leaked out of the bags into the fjord through a weak point in the connection between the...

(A) Development of picoeukaryote abundance in the first experiment (12th February until the 3rd March). The two grey lines frame the period of CO2 addition. High CO2 mescosms (warm colors: M2, M4, M6, M7, M8) reached an average pCO2 of 1063 (±15) μatm on t-16. Ambient CO2 mesocosms (cold colors: M1, M3, M5, M9, M10) were left unperturbed with an av...

Abundance of individual plankton groups during peak chla concentrations in phase III. For the community-based analysis we generally included functional groups rather than species. For copepods, we only included Pseudocalanus sp. here since this species strongly dominated the copepod community both, numerically and in terms of biomass. (Note, howeve...

Ocean acidification has direct physiological effects on organisms, for example by dissolving the calcium carbonate structures of calcifying species. However, non-calcifiers may also be affected by changes in seawater chemistry. To disentangle the direct and indirect effects of ocean acidification on zooplankton growth, we undertook a study with two...

Increasing anthropogenic CO2 concentration in the atmosphere is altering sea water carbonate chemistry with unknown biological and ecological consequences. Whereas some reports are beginning to emerge on the effects of ocean acidification (OA) on fish, very little is known about the impact of OA on jellyfish. In particular, the benthic stages of me...

Ocean acidification (OA) is one of the major threats to our global oceans. The effects of OA by decreasing pH on biota may manifest directly as well as indirectly via trophic pathways. The development of mesozooplankton community structures was analyzed in a manipulative mesocosm study (Gullmar Fjörd KOSMOS2013 Expedition), conducted from March to...

Ocean acidification (OA) is one of the major threats to our global oceans. It may affect biota directly by decreases in pH, as well as indirectly via trophic pathways. Obviously, most of the OA research has focused on calcifying organisms, but recently also other organisms have come under investigation. One of the prominent exceptions is gelatinous...